Dear teachers,
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
For the past three years, I have joined your team by responding to the shortage. It was a mistake, unfortunately!
When I read your comments and see the reactions to comments like those from Gregory Charles, I find it hard to understand your frustration.
You know, education belongs to everyone. It is a social project. Every citizen has the right to have ideas. I don’t care if the person’s ideas are good or bad. The important thing is that there is debate and discussion.
I am not a nurse. On the other hand, I have the right to give my opinion and find that the health system is not optimal, right? Because I don’t pay during a visit to the emergency room, am I not allowed to point out the incongruities of the system?
Health belongs to everyone, public works belong to everyone and so does education. Yes, you have the right, and it is your right. It’s the start of something and it’s called citizen action.
Why rebel when someone gives ideas and does not come from the middle? To think outside the box, often it’s going to take someone who comes from outside the box. Hannah Arendt was not a teacher, yet she was one of the greats to come forward with criticism and ideas.
We are indeed the most important players in the system. Are we acting in this direction? Nope ! Dear comrades, to make a real change, we just have to stop keeping the system alive at the end of our arms. The agony is slow and painful, and we are all responsible for a large part of it. In whose name are we keeping this bureaucratic system filled with absurdity under a ventilator? In the name of the children, of course, but what about those who will be in our schools in twenty years? In a hundred years ? Imagine the conditions of schools, services and our arms if nothing is done.
We teach mutual aid, solidarity and openness to the world and it is quite the opposite that I see on the ground. Is there really mutual aid and solidarity, when we see the number of departures at the beginning of the career of young teachers and that the situation is only getting worse? To ask the question, is to answer it.
Everyone does their own thing with their professional autonomy and I have rarely seen a teacher work his real number of hours, it’s difficult to earn anyone’s respect in this case. By doing more, we falsify the real needs and then many fall in the fight, in the long term, it is not helping the system and the students unfortunately. When the time comes to assess the needs, everything seems to be not so bad, however, this is not the case. Out of love and vocation, we ensure that working conditions and the notoriety of the profession deteriorate at lightning speed. Mutual aid and solidarity, not really.
We hold the real power and we are always trying to find out why no one is listening to us. Who cares?
In love, it is in the small daily gestures that we see the depth of feelings, I believe that this thought can be applied to the indignation towards the school system and to stop compensating and adding heaviness to the system .
Is there an open mind? Probably not, because an outside person gives possible solutions (good or bad) as well as his opinion and we close ourselves like an oyster by saying loud and clear: Who does he think he is and why does no one ask the teachers? Lead by example, some would say. I did many jobs before joining you, know that I have never seen in another place employees who accept everything as we do. Before asking for the respect of others, we must begin by respecting ourselves. We deserve it, and so do the children.
Before thinking about changing things in education and criticizing people who offer possible solutions (good or bad), we must ask ourselves about the role played by the State in the educational mess. The real culprit is not Gregory Charles or Professor Tournesol who works 10 hours more without being paid, it is the one who gags us without too much resistance who must be pointed out. In the past 60 years, about 30 ministers of education have come and gone to undo what the other has just done. An average of two years at the helm is not serious, dear elected officials. Do you know the myth of Sisyphus by Camus?
We are all in the same team, currently everyone shoots on his side and it is the student who ends up without cover.
The duty of loyalty, it is towards the children that it must and should be, period! If we really loved our children?